Ye olde culture flip

[jabroni154]

Once again, I'd like to bring back ye olde argument about culture flipping and losing armies. Up until last night, sure culture flipping was a pain but I had never really had an entire war turned around by it. So for most of the discussions, I was like yeah, yeah, culture flipping only really seems to work for little piddly cities on the edge of my empire.

So here is the scenario. I am the Indians stomping the Japanese. Japanese have Pikemen, I have War Elephants and plenty of them. I have run through three cities already and I am starting on one of the size 12 cities next to their second capital (I took the first one )

I have roughly 12 war elephants attacking which should be sufficient. I take the town losing a few/damaging a few and send up 6 to the capital. There are of course more war elephants on the way so I wait a bit to get a full battalion again. So, I have 4 elephants garrisoning a town of 10 now.

One turn later while I am waiting for the other elephants to get to the capital and the wounded ones to heal, it culture flips. Arrghh, stupid Japanese. Of course, I had 4 more elephants en route so I re-attack and take the city back quite easily. Then, I attack Tokyo and take pretty huge losses (stupid capital bonus) and retreat now down to 4 wounded elephants. Next turn, bam, culture flip again! WTF???

Now, my force which was quite decent is now down to a paltry 4 elephants out of 12 (+4 in the back). Culture flipping took out 8 of my war elephants. That is just not right and cause my to bang the table quite a bit last night.

I mean come on, what is the deal? If one unit can raze the town, I firmly believe that 4 of them could keep a city in line. Besides, at worst case, my troops make the elephants stampede, burning down half the city or something. Eventually I did retake the city (and promptly razed it to the ground in honor of my 8 elephants that perished at the hands of the peasants).

My point is and I know this has been rehashed quite a few times, the culture flip system has got to change for how armies are dealt with. Here is my humble suggestion to avoid future calamities like the ones suffered by the Indians above:

- Option A: Check the rebellion

If a city wishes to revolt, you have the option to tell your troops to just let loose and to do an Assyrian number on the populace. Start cracking heads and stacking skulls and make an example of the population. As a result, your overall reputation suffers because you are just a bad-ass (Despot, despot, you're a despot, etc.). Inject war-weariness in a democracy, etc. or whatever.

If you have just a few troops in a giant city or the city is still resisting, do some sort of population vs. unit roll. In the worst case, the city gets burned to ground, something that you shouldd have done in the first place when you took the city.

If all goes well, your military scares the bejeezus out of the population and they fall back into line. For any other cities in a similar situation, it sets an example (i.e. your head will be next in the pile of skulls, jabrone).

Option B: Withdraw military

Take all of the military units and pull them 1 square out of the city. If you are at war with the civilization, you start to take collateral damage (i.e. some sort of random calculation). For units with no hitpoints (artillery, catapaults, etc.), they get destroyed. Ships have a chance of moving one square out (into the sea). Airplanes have a chance of being rebased at the nearest city. For both ships and airplanes, they may take damage (signifying the lack of fuel/supplies/etc.). Workers of a different nationality stay (and go to the new civ), workers of a your nationality evacuate. With the random damage thing, your workers may be captured.

This is kind of like the whole seceding Hong Kong back to the Chinese. The units withdraw and everyone is all friendly like.

Now, one could spice this up a bit further and add the option to sell/etc. all improvements while leaving. Take a hit on the reputation but one can easily set back the city for the new civ.

[Zachriel]

I saw this one coming as you told the story. You took a city next to his capital. The city is full of people who hate you, and hate the elephant you rode in on. You didn't leave a large garrison, but moved on to the next city. You didn't rush improvements to institute some sort of political control. This was a disaster in the making.

There are several good strategies to use in this situation. For instance, use TOTAL CONTROL. That means putting a very large garrison in place until the city is out of resistance. With a large military garrision, this normally takes just one turn. Meanwhile, if you have the resources, force-rush the temple by disbanding unneeded units. If this is not practical, then buy-rush the temple as soon as the resistance has ended.

There are many other strategies that may be more appropriate to your own playing style.

[Capt Dizle]

Thats very nice Zach, but nothing compensates for the loss of units. Just stupid.

[Harovan]

I am also not very happy with culture flipping , and would like if it was a matter of single pop points rather than whole cities, but I can live with it.

While at war, I usually place one (1) obsolete and maybe even wounded unit in the city and 2-3 strong units outside. I let the people starve as soon as they get out of resistance. If the city flips (only if my culture is very low), I simply retake it. It's better to lose 2 or even 3 outdated wounded units that way, than a big garrison of my best defenders.

[Laertes]

Raze Raze Raze

Every successful invasion needs a lot of settlers following up behind.

I think this is something that you get over after the first couple of times, and either you use the huge garrison technique (allowing recovery and catch up of new units) or add some settlers to add some of your own pop, or burn it and build a new city under it with improved territory all around.

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by jimmytrick
Thats very nice Zach, but nothing compensates for the loss of units. Just stupid.

Sorry, jabroni154. I wasn't trying to make you feel bad. Just trying to give you suggestions to avoid this in the future.

I do know that if you don't take preventive action, then the probability of a flip is much greater. The alternative is to bemoan your luck everytime it happens. I prefer the prevention strategy.

[jabroni154]

If I remember right (and I might have had the number of turns off in between the attack on the capital/etc.), the city was out of resistance the first time and I was building a temple. It is a little bit fuzzy (as it was fairly late when I was playing) as the resistance folded ultra fast. The second time it lasted longer but the first time (which was kind of weird) it was entirely suppressed in one turn. Besides, it wasn't the original capital, it was a swapped capital so the culture points would have been dramatically less as well.

It is not so much that I lost the city to a culture flip, that is cool and all. I won't debate that fact as that adds a bit of intrigue to the game. It is more so that I lost the units, that is what bothers me. In fact, it might not have been so bad if it were not for the fact that it happened twice, each time costing me 4 units, that is just plain dumb. 8 total units gone and who knows how many turns of production as a by-product. I mean I went from a huge squadron of elephants to what was left over retreating (*sniff* much less than the 12-16 I had).

Of course I probably should have just been spiteful and razed it the second time I took it but I didn't think it would happen twice, much less only 1 turn afterwards. Sheesh.

If it takes only one unit to raze it (which is a bit of a stretch anyway in just one turn), why should the city ever fall via non-military means if I am still at war. I mean come on, if we are at war, let the elephants rampage down the streets and stampede the angry mob. Then again, this is Civ logic so I accept some gaps but damn, this almost cost me the war and made me sign for peace, all for the culture flip.

All in all, it encourages razing cities to the ground which I think will now be my strategy any time that there is a nearby AI city. I've been debating switching to that and now that looks like what I will be trying to do.

Any comments on the suggestion for a possible change (even though I doubt it would ever get changed)?

[graeme]

"Now we see the violence inherent in the system!"

In this case cure would be better than prevention but that looks unlikely to happen.

My main object is that, if anything, culture flipping often makes the game more militaristic. Two cases:

1) I lose two size 12 cities on my borders to the Greeks. I except the loss of the first as a freak occurance as our total culture is approximately even and I control and have built all but two or three Wonders. The second city flips, this is of course not acceptable I decalre war and destroy the Greeks. Benefit of culutre flipping for Greeks 0.

2) Another game. I am heading easily for a space race victory and I get a bit bored so declare war on the Babylonians. I have bombers and they are a long way off anything to counter act them, so I pummel their infrastructure my invasion force arrives and I start to capture Babylonian citites. Once war weariness starts to set in, I sue for peace and get good terms. Next turn city A has flipped, next turn city B has flipped. So what incentive is their for me to stop the war none, I either raze citites or destroy them. Benefit of culture flipping to Babylonians 0.

Of course after racking up some big loses to culture flipping you adopt a strategy to prevent it. But mainly these are of detriment to the enjoyment of the game

Graeme

[Jon Shafer]

Agreed. Yes, there are ways to avoid the terrible losses due to culture flipping, but the fact remains that the measures you have to take to prevent that from happening detract from the fun of the game. I mean, sure, you can raze every city you capture, then build a new one, but do civilizations really do that? Burn every city they capture to the ground, then build a new one right afterwards? Of course not. Yes, there should be resistors. Spontaneously changing back to their original country is a bit... aggrevating along with somewhat unrealistic. If you have an army of 15,000 (3,000 or so per unit), then they should easily be able to hold down a city of any size... please...

[Austin]

The problem isn't that cities riot and rebel. This happened all the time in history. The problem is that when they do, they automatically destroy the garrison.

That frankly is ridiculous. Hell a lot of times angry citizens are far more dangerous to my troops than the civilizations flipping standing army!

What usually happened historically when a city went nutso out of control is that if the garrison couldn't immediatly quell the revolt the garrison would withdraw, contain the city, and let the revolt burn itself out. This happened a lot in Europe during the 1848 revolts.

Every so often you had a case like the Romans in Jerusalem in AD 68, but the Roman garrison was so tiny it shouldn't qualify as a military unit anyways.

What SHOULD happen when a city flips is that all military units in the city are displaced one hex outside of it. I could see a case for support units like artillery or ships being destroyed, but frontliners should not.

It's the potential loss of all your armies that is the reason people raze or do other stuff like that. Hell I just bomb the crap out of the place until the population is low, then move in and immediately add a settler to it (I build one settler for each city I plan to take from an AI).

Austin

[wrylachlan]

Instead of culture flipping for newly taken cities, there should be a percentage chance each turn that the resisting or unhappy citizen becomes a Rebel. A rebel would be the most current foot-soldier and it would pop up just outside of the city and try to attack. If you have a lot of resisters you could see 2 or 3 riflemen(or infantry or...) pop up outside of your city. This would make it about a fight, not about random culture flipping.

And don't get me wrong, I'm not saying this should take the place of flipping. Keep culture flipping for the border cities, but use this in place of the culture flipping modifier for newly taken over cities.

[Zachriel]

I prefer the old model with partisans. The partisans control the productive tiles outside the city, the garrison holds the city. The garrison could leave the protection of the city and try to catch the partisans, or the partisans could try to retake the city. At least it would be intuitive. The partisans should be able to hide easily in rough terrain, so that you would have to enter the map square to see them. Of course, this would initiate an automatic combat (ambush).

[jabroni154]

Spot on guys. That is exactly what I thought. Sure, I can take the time to have huge fortifications/etc. to prevent flipping/etc. or I can raze cities, neither of which really improves the fun of the game (which Firaxis has said they are all in favor of )

Usually culture flipping pretty much always makes me mad and changes my view from a decent land grab to extermination (muhahahaha). The net benefit to the AI is always zero whenever a culture flip occurs. The fact that the units in the city disappears really deflates the fun whenever it occurs too and IMHO does not really add anything to the game. If I had a choice, I would just as soon give up culture flipping of cities altogether if the garrison thing is not fixed.

That frankly is ridiculous. Hell a lot of times angry citizens are far more dangerous to my troops than the civilizations flipping standing army!

Sweet, my thoughts exactly

[Austin]

Originally posted by Zachriel
I prefer the old model with partisans. The partisans control the productive tiles outside the city, the garrison holds the city. The garrison could leave the protection of the city and try to catch the partisans, or the partisans could try to retake the city. At least it would be intuitive. The partisans should be able to hide easily in rough terrain, so that you would have to enter the map square to see them. Of course, this would initiate an automatic combat (ambush).

And every turn, each resister in the city spawns a new partisan. Partisans are weak units but they still kick loyal citizens off of workable tiles, and pillage so you have almost no choice but to send troops after them.

I would make it tougher to get rid of resistors too. Heck you could have a "Vietnam War" scenario using this. Of course I don't think any of this is moddable though, although didn't Korn's mod have partisans?

Austin

[MosesPresley]

I would like to see Partisans and a much lower chance of a culture flip. I still like the idea of a culture flip, but right now the odds seem kind of high and a little arbitrary.

OTOH

It is pretty easy to work around it though. You need to raise the luxury percentage to the people and rush build some culture improvements. It seems to me that Firaxis put the culture flip in to prevent exactly what you were doing: totally destroying a civilization in just a few turns.

[Xarathas]

The culture flipping really puts a damper on things. Aside from the standard culture flips, I've had several extreme ones.

1) A recently taken city that had no resisters + a rushed temple and 12+ units stationed in it. (this happened a couple of times actually..)

2) A city that was taken about 50 turns back, that had a temple, library, and courthouse in it (and I think marketplace too). What really sucked was that it was about 4~5 turns from finishing the forbidden palace at the time of the flip Not to mention it was the only route connecting my northern and southern empire.. oh boy did that screw things up. Half my kingdom lost the luxuries for a few turns. This wouldn't have been so odd if the city in question was surrounded by the warring country's cities, but it was only bordered to the west size 5-ish city of theirs.. It's north and south side was my cities and the water to the east.

For #1, I've pretty much learned to not station so heavily in a newly conquered city once all the resisters are quelled and the temple rushed. Can't do much about #2 though.. hope that doesn't happen again, eesh.

On a side note, I've noticed that the culture never flips on a turn where you are about to complete an improvement.. not sure if that's true. Have anyone seen otherwise?

[Jon Shafer]

When something completely stupid like that happens, I just load up an autosave and initiate diplomacy or something to randomize things.

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by Trip
When something completely stupid like that happens, I just load up an autosave and initiate diplomacy or something to randomize things.

Actually, if you back up a couple of turns and replay the position, you will find that nearly all flips are avoidable -- once you understand the parameters involved.

[Jon Shafer]

Actually, I've reloaded many a time, and by doing things in a different order, initiating a trade, making peace, etc. the number set within the game gets randomized and I can avoid that kind of stuff.

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by Trip
Actually, I've reloaded many a time, and by doing things in a different order, initiating a trade, making peace, etc. the number set within the game gets randomized and I can avoid that kind of stuff.

Cool! , Glad that works for you.

However, you can also replay the position with the intention of finding methods to avoid the problem all together. For instance, rushing a cultural improvement, or whatever. I have done this with many abandoned games in the old days (back in '01) and rarely experience an unexpected cultural revulsion, er reversion.

[Amesjustin]

I usually garrison inside and out of cities, starting with the little ones on the edge of the enemy empire, until I get to the bigger, older cities bordering the enemy capitol. If the enemy capitol has no wonders that I want, I just burn that puppy to the ground. Then I do the same with the remaining older cities. If there are wonders I want, then I just make sure I have a HUGE army (like 10 units per city) and swarm their territory. Once I take a city I would like to keep, I garrisson with 2 units and leave 4 more just outside of town in case of a rebellion.

It also helps to really maximize your overall culture - that lessens the chance of flipping.

[Jon Shafer]

Originally posted by Zachriel
Cool! , Glad that works for you.

However, you can also replay the position with the intention of finding methods to avoid the problem all together. For instance, rushing a cultural improvement, or whatever. I have done this with many abandoned games in the old days (back in '01) and rarely experience an unexpected cultural revulsion, er reversion.

True, but every now and then something wacky will happen. I try to build up as much culture as I can early, just to prevent culture switching... there's nothing worse than having an army and major city disappear...

[notyoueither]

The ways to combat reversion (flipping)? They are many, but they include:

1. Raze the city. Or with 1.21 abandon it after capture. I believe abandoning is less hurtful for reputation and War Weariness, but I'm waiting for confirmation.

2. Do not leave any enemy cities with cultural borders in the prospective flippers usable 21 squares.

3. Starve the pop down to 1 and force it to stay there until you can be sure that it is out of flipping danger.

3a. Prior to it being 1 pop, leave just 1 garrison unit in it, with 2 Infantry attackers fortified adjacent. Flip, Kill, resume starvation diet.

3b. Once the city reaches 1 pop, garrison it with 4 units.

4. If you are war with your cultural equal, or superior, go till the end. If you leave them in the game, you will lose captured cities back to them to a flip. It is only a matter of time.

5. Oh. Don't use recently captured enemy cities as rally points for wounded units. That much is in your power to avoid.

Epilouge. I really hope they implement a major overhaul of flipping in the XP. The warning that a revolt is afoot is really needed. 'Should we club the population into oblivion or should we withdraw?' Of course the consequences for a monarch, consul, or president who chooses to turn the city into a pile of skulls should be severe. Much better to withdraw, allow the resistors to get into their spiffy Uniforms of Liberation and then kill them.

[Coracle]

Culture Flipping, at least the way it is implemented in this game, is total nonsense and garbage, and I wish whomever thought it up admits it and tells us if he had just finished several doobies before thinking of it.

Example One: a rival city of '12' that had been part of the same civilization for 5,000 years suddenly flipped to me. Absurd. After millennia of culture with their own civ they suddenly do some braindead bean-counting like the AI does and decide to join a different civ? A joke.

I once conquered the Greeks excpet for one crappy offshore town that was their capital. Capitals jump from town to town automatically, also dumb. I had over two dizen towns and cities and was very strong. Despite a huge army just outside this just conquered city IT FLIPPED BACK TO GREECE.

Why? Because all the stupid AI does is count the number of happy people, foreign nationals, AND PROXIMITY TO THE CAPITAL, no matter how pathetic and small that capital and civ.

So it does stuff no sane people would do.

I razed that city, of course.

Stupid AI.

[Zachriel]

In the middle ages, every lord had a castle, and anyone with a castle was a lord. These lords often changed sides depending on the political situation. This was not considered revolution, but a normal happenstance of the social structure. Remember that nations did not exist until modern times, and central control was very weak, or even nonexistent.

[Jethro83]

I have no qualms with the concept of culture-flipping. Instead of sitting there with a huge garrison, I'll send settlers/spare workers into a newly conquered city, starve out the original inhabitants, and replace them with the settlers/workers I send. I was once Egypt, and in a conflict with the Russians, and that alone helped me hold their capital until the temple was completed and replacing the original Russian culture with my Egyptian one. Of course, Moscow was on and surrounded by a floodplain with wheat in two surrounding squares, so Egyptians bred into the city quickly.

Of course, sometimes, I'll just raze the damn city. But only if in a terrible place that won't allow it to be of any benefit to my empire.

[redstar1]

Yeah, I find myself using that tactic a lot where the enemy is in good territory. I don't like keeping enemy cities so I build up a deposit of settlers before an invasion and send them in behind to build cities where I have razed enemy ones, or to repopulate any cities I decide to keep.

I do this now because what I found was that after razing cities, making peace and going home, either that civ or the others would rush to the empty space and cause me just as much trouble.

[Zachriel]

I do it the "hard way!" I never raze and never starve beyond what naturally occurs during the transition, and yet, I almost never lose a city to cultural reversion, and when I do, it is not unexpected. Such as in the following incident playing as the Americans:

http://www.crowncity.net/civ3/gotm5/0700ad.htm

[Jon Shafer]

Nice little story Zach, it was entertaining. The Russian wars were particularly dramatic.

[Captain]

I've never experienced a culture flip yet. Maybe because I never get past the start of industrial age. Early wars never seem to flip, maybe because there isn't enough culture or large enough cities. I always have at least equal amounts of culture so that's not a problem. In my current game, only the capitals are of any consequential size (12) while all other cities are around 6-7. If I take their capital, it's usually game over for them anyways.

It hasn't happened yet but I'm sure I would find it annoying to lose the garrison. Not the city, just the whole garrison evaporating.

I imagine the root problem is that it encourages razing wonderless (the majority) cities rather than keeping them - which seems contrary to Firaxis' stated aim of making it more "builder" friendly. How is it good for builders to raze everything? Usually you want to keep the existing infrastructure.

I agree with the argument that if 1 warrior can raze a size 20 city in one turn, then it shouldn't take 14 cav to hold to a size 6 city. Not an IRL thing, it's a play balance thing. Why stack and hold? this ties down the army. Just raze and continue.

For me, I think if razing a city took 1 unit per pop point decrease per turn, that would be better. Making razing harder, or forcing it to tie down a similar number of units, would make it more palatable to risk garrisoning instead of razing.